Chapter 7

The Guest

WHEN PHOEBE
awoke,--which
she did with the early twittering of the conjugal
couple of robins in the pear-tree,--she heard movements below
stairs, and, hastening down, found Hepzibah already in the
kitchen. She stood by a window, holding a book in close
contiguity to her nose, as if with the hope of gaining an
olfactory acquaintance with its contents, since her imperfect
vision made it not very easy to read them. If any volume could
have manifested its essential wisdom in the mode suggested, it
would certainly have been the one now in Hepzibah's hand; and the
kitchen, in such an event, would forthwith have steamed with the
fragrance of venison, turkeys, capons, larded partridges,
puddings, cakes, and Christmas-pies, in all manner of elaborate
mixture and concoction. It was a cookery book, full of
unnumerable old fashions of English dishes, and illustrated with
engravings, which represented the arrangements of the table at
such banquets as it might have befitted a nobleman to give, in
the great hall of his castle. And, amid these rich and potent
devices of the culinary art (not one of which, probably, had been
tested, within the memory of any man's grandfather), poor
Hepzibah was seeking for some nimble little titbit, which, with
what skill she had, and such materials as were at hand, she might
toss up for breakfast.

Soon, with
a deep sigh, she put
aside the savory volume, and inquired of Phoebe whether old
Speckle, as she called one of the hens, had laid an egg the
preceding day. Phoebe ran to see, but returned without the
expected treasure in her hand. At that instant, however, the
blast of a fish-dealer's conch was heard,
announcing his approach along the street. With
energetic raps at the shop-window, Hepzibah summoned the man in,
and made purchase of what he warranted as the finest mackerel in
his cart, and as fat a one as ever he felt with his finger so
early in the season. Requesting Phoebe to roast some
coffee,--which she casually observed was the real Mocha, and so long kept
that each of the small berries ought to be worth its weight in
gold,--the maiden lady heaped fuel into the vast receptacle of
the ancient fireplace in such quantity as soon to drive the
lingering dusk out of the kitchen. The country-girl, willing to
give her utmost assistance, proposed to make an Indian cake,
after her mother's peculiar method, of easy manufacture, and
which she could vouch for as possessing a richness, and, if
rightly prepared, a delicacy, unequalled by any other mode of
breakfast-cake. Hepzibah gladly assenting, the kitchen was soon
the scene of savory preparation. Perchance, amid their proper
element of smoke, which eddied forth from the ill-constructed
chimney, the ghosts of departed cook-maids looked wonderingly on,
or peeped down the great breadth of the flue, despising the
simplicity of the projected meal, yet ineffectually pining to
thrust their shadowy hands into each inchoate dish. The
half-starved rats, at any rate, stole visibly out of their
hiding-places, and sat on their hind-legs, snuffing the fumy
atmosphere, and wistfully awaiting an opportunity to nibble.

Hepzibah had
no natural turn for cookery, and, to say the
truth, had fairly incurred her present meagreness, by often
choosing to go without her dinner, rather than be attendant on
the rotation of the spit, or ebullition of the pot. Her zeal
over the fire, therefore, was quite an heroic test of sentiment.
It was touching, and positively worthy of tears (if Phoebe, the
only spectator, except the rats and ghosts aforesaid, had not
been better employed than in shedding them), to see her rake out
a bed of fresh and glowing coals, and proceed to broil the
mackerel. Her usually pale cheeks were all ablaze with heat and
hurry. She watched the fish with as much tender care and
minuteness of attention as if,--we know not how to express it
otherwise,--as if her own heart were on the gridiron, and her
immortal happiness were involved in its being done precisely to a
turn!

Life, within
doors, has few pleasanter prospects
than a neatly-arranged and well-provisioned breakfast-table. We
come to it freshly, in the dewy youth of the day, and when our
spiritual and sensual elements are in better accord than at a
later period; so that the material delights of the morning meal
are capable of being fully
enjoyed, without any very grievous reproaches, whether gastric or
conscientious, for yielding even a trifle overmuch to the animal
department of our nature. The thoughts, too, that run around the
ring of familiar guests, have a piquancy and mirthfulness, and
oftentimes a vivid truth, which more rarely find their way into
the elaborate intercourse of dinner. Hepzibah's small and
ancient table, supported on its slender and graceful legs, and
covered with a cloth of the richest damask, looked worthy to be
the scene and centre of one of the cheerfullest of parties. The
vapor of the broiled fish arose like incense from the shrine of a
barbarian idol, while the fragrance of the Mocha might have
gratified the nostrils of a tutelary Lar, or whatever power has
scope over a modern breakfast-table. Phoebe's Indian cakes were
the sweetest offering of all,--in their hue befitting the
rustic altars of the innocent and golden age,--or, so brightly
yellow were they, resembling some of the bread which was changed
to glistening gold, when Midas tried to eat it. The butter must
not be forgotten,--butter which Phoebe herself had churned, in
her own rural home, and brought it to her cousin as a
propitiatory gift,--smelling of clover-blossoms, and diffusing
the charm of pastoral scenery through the dark-panelled parlor.
All this, with the quaint gorgeousness of the old China cups and
saucers, and the crested spoons, and a silver cream-jug
(Hepzibah's only other article of plate, and shaped like the
rudest porringer), set out a board at which the stateliest of old
Colonel Pyncheon's guests need not have scorned to take his
place. But the Puritan's face scowled down out of the picture,
as if nothing on the table pleased his appetite.

By way
of contributing
what grace she could, Phoebe gathered some roses
and a few other flowers, possessing either scent or beauty, and
arranged them in a glass pitcher, which, having long ago lost its
handle, was so much the fitter for a flower-vase. The early
sunshine--as fresh as that which peeped into Eve's bower, while
she and Adam sat at breakfast there--came twinkling through the
branches of the pear-tree, and fell quite across the table. All
was now ready. There were chairs and plates for three. A chair
and plate for Hepzibah,--the same for Phoebe,--but what other
guest did her cousin look for?

Throughout this
preparation, there
had been a constant tremor in Hepzibah's
frame; an agitation so powerful that Phoebe could see the
quivering of her gaunt shadow, as thrown by the fire-light on the
kitchen wall, or by the sunshine on the parlor floor. Its
manifestations were so various, and
agreed so little with one another, that the girl knew not what to
make of it. Sometimes it seemed an ecstasy of delight and
happiness. At such moments, Hepzibah would fling out her arms,
and enfold Phoebe in them, and kiss her cheek as tenderly as ever
her mother had; she appeared to do so by an inevitable impulse,
and as if her bosom were oppressed with tenderness, of which she
must needs pour out a little, in order to gain breathing-room.
The next moment, without any visible cause for the change, her
unwonted joy shrank back, appalled as it were, and clothed itself
in mourning; or it ran and hid itself, so to speak, in the
dungeon of her heart, where it had long lain chained, while a
cold, spectral sorrow took the place of the imprisoned joy, that
was afraid to be enfranchised--a sorrow as black as that was
bright. She often broke into a little, nervous, hysteric laugh,
more touching than any tears could be; and forthwith, as if to
try which was the most touching, a gust of tears would follow; or
perhaps the laughter and tears came both at once, and surrounded
our poor Hepzibah, in a moral sense, with a kind of pale, dim
rainbow. Towards Phoebe, as we have said, she was
affectionate,--far tenderer than ever before, in their brief acquaintance,
except for that one kiss on the preceding night,--yet with a
continually recurring pettishness and irritability. She would
speak sharply to her; then, throwing aside all the starched
reserve of her ordinary manner, ask pardon, and the next instant
renew the just-forgiven injury.

At last,
when their
mutual labor was all finished, she took Phoebe's hand in her own
trembling one.

"Bear with
me, my dear child," she cried;
"for truly my heart is full to the brim! Bear with me; for I
love you, Phoebe, though I speak so roughly! Think nothing of
it, dearest child! By-and-by, I shall be kind, and only kind!"

"My dearest
cousin, cannot you tell me what has happened?"
asked Phoebe, with a sunny and tearful sympathy. "What is it
that moves you so?"

"Hush! hush!
He is coming;"
whispered Hepzibah, hastily wiping her eyes. "Let him see you
first, Phoebe; for you are young and rosy, and cannot help
letting a smile break out, whether or no. He always liked bright
faces. And mine is old now, and the tears are hardly dry on it.
He never could abide tears. There; draw the curtain a little, so
that the shadow may fall across his side of the table! But let
there be a good deal of sunshine, too; for he never was fond of
gloom, as some people are. He has had but little
sunshine in his life,--poor
Clifford,--and, oh, what a black shadow! Poor, poor Clifford!"

Thus murmuring,
in an undertone, as if speaking rather to
her own heart than to Phoebe, the old gentlewoman stepped on
tip-toe about the room, making such arrangements as suggested
themselves at the crisis.

Meanwhile, there
was a step in
the passage-way, above stairs. Phoebe recognized it as the same
which had passed upward, as. through her dream, in the
night-time. The approaching guest, whoever it might be, appeared
to pause at the head of the staircase; he paused twice or thrice
in the descent; he paused again at the foot. Each time, the
delay seemed to be without purpose, but rather from a
forgetfulness of the purpose which had set him in motion, or as
if the person's feet came involuntarily to a stand-still, because
the motive power was too feeble to sustain his progress.
Finally, he made a long pause at the threshold of the parlor. He
took hold of the knob of the door; then loosened his grasp,
without opening it. Hepzibah, her hands convulsively clasped,
stood gazing at the entrance.

"Dear Cousin
Hepzibah, pray
don't look so!" said Phoebe, trembling; for her cousin's emotion,
and this mysteriously reluctant step, made her feel as if a ghost
were coming into the room. "You really frighten me! Is
something awful going to happen?"

The final
pause at the threshold proved so
long, that Hepzibah, unable to endure the suspense, rushed
forward, threw open the door, and led in the stranger by the
hand. At the first glance, Phoebe saw an elderly personage, in
an old-fashioned dressing-gown of faded damask, and wearing his
gray, or almost white hair, of an unusual length. It quite
overshadowed his forehead, except when he thrust it back, and
stared vaguely about the room. After a very brief inspection of
his face, it was easy to conceive that his footstep must
necessarily be such an one as that which, slowly, and with as
indefinite an aim as a child's first journey across a floor, had
just brought him hitherward. Yet there were no tokens that his
physical strength might not have sufficed for a free and
determined gait. It was the spirit of the man that could not
walk. The expression of his countenance--while,
notwithstanding, it had the light of reason in it--seemed to
waver, and glimmer, and nearly to die away, and feebly to recover
itself again. It was like a flame
which we see twinkling among half-extinguished embers; we gaze at
it more intently than if it were a positive blaze gushing vividly
upward,--more intently, but with a certain impatience, as if it
ought either to kindle itself into satisfactory splendor, or be
at once extinguished.

For an
instant after entering the
room, the guest stood still, retaining Hepzibah's hand,
instinctively, as a child does that of the grown person who
guides it. He saw Phoebe, however, and caught an illumination
from her youthful and pleasant aspect, which, indeed, threw a
cheerfulness about the parlor, like the circle of reflected
brilliancy around the glass vase of flowers that was standing in
the sunshine. He made a salutation, or, to speak nearer the
truth, an ill-defined, abortive attempt at courtesy. Imperfect
as it was, however, it conveyed an idea, or, at least, gave a
hint, of indescribable grace, such as no practised art of
external manners could have attained. It was too slight to seize
upon, at the instant; yet, as recollected afterwards, seemed to
transfigure the whole man.

"Dear Clifford,"
said
Hepzibah, in the tone with which one soothes a wayward infant,
"this is our cousin Phoebe,--little Phoebe
Pyncheon,--Arthur's only child, you know. She has come from the country to
stay with us a while; for our old house has grown to be very
lonely now."

"Phoebe?--Phoebe Pyncheon?--Phoebe?"
repeated the guest, with a strange, sluggish, ill-defined
utterance. "Arthur's child! Ah, I forget! No matter. She is
very welcome!"

"Come, dear
Clifford, take this chair,"
said Hepzibah, leading him to his place. "Pray, Phoebe, lower
the curtain a very little more. Now let us begin breakfast."

The guest
seated himself in the place assigned him, and
looked strangely around. He was evidently trying to grapple with
the present scene, and bring it home to his mind with a more
satisfactory distinctness. He desired to be certain, at least,
that he was here, in the low-studded, cross-beamed,
oaken-panelled parlor, and not in some other spot, which had
stereotyped itself into his senses. But the effort was too great
to be sustained with more than a fragmentary success.
Continually, as we may express it, he faded away out of his
place; or, in other words, his mind and consciousness took their
departure, leaving his wasted, gray, and melancholy figure,--a
substantial emptiness, a material ghost,--to occupy his seat
at table. Again, after a blank moment, there
would be a flickering taper-gleam in his eye-balls.
It betokened that his spiritual part had returned, and was doing
its best to kindle the heart's household fire, and light up
intellectual lamps in the dark and ruinous mansion, where it was
doomed to be a forlorn inhabitant.

At one
of these
moments, of less torpid, yet still imperfect animation, Phoebe
became convinced of what she had at first rejected as too
extravagant and startling an idea. She saw that the person
before her must have been the original of the beautiful miniature
in her cousin Hepzibah's possession. Indeed, with a feminine eye
for costume, she had at once identified the damask dressing-gown,
which enveloped him, as the same in figure, material, and
fashion, with that so elaborately represented in the picture.
This old, faded garment, with all its pristine brilliancy
extinct, seemed, in some indescribable way, to translate the
wearer's untold misfortune, and make it perceptible to the
beholder's eye. It was the better to be discerned, by this
exterior type, how worn and old were the soul's more immediate
garments; that form and countenance, the beauty and grace of
which had almost transcended the skill of the most exquisite of
artists. It could the more adequately be known that the soul of
the man must have suffered some miserable wrong, from its earthly
experience. There be seemed to sit, with a dim veil of decay and
ruin betwixt him and the world, but through which, at flitting
intervals, might be caught the same expression, so refined, so
softly imaginative, which Malbone--venturing a happy touch,
with suspended breath--had imparted to the miniature! There
had been something so innately characteristic in this look, that
all the dusky years, and the burthen of unfit calamity which had
fallen upon him, did not suffice utterly to destroy it.

Hepzibah had
now poured out a cup of deliciously fragrant
coffee, and presented it to her guest. As his eyes met hers, he
seemed bewildered and disquieted.

"Is this
you,
Hepzibah?" he murmured, sadly; then, more apart, and perhaps
unconscious that he was overheard. "How changed! how changed!
And is she angry with me? Why does she bend her brow so?"

Poor Hepzibah!
It was that wretched scowl, which time,
and her near-sightedness, and the fret of inward discomfort, had
rendered so habitual that any vehemence of mood invariably evoked
it. But, at the indistinct manner of his words, her whole
face grew tender, and even lovely,
with sorrowful affection;--the harshness of her features
disappeared, as it were, behind the warm and misty glow.

Her tone,
as she uttered the exclamation, had a plaintive
and really exquisite melody thrilling through it, yet without
subduing a certain something which an obtuse auditor might still
have mistaken for asperity. It was as if some transcendent
musician should draw a soul-thrilling sweetness out of a cracked
instrument, which makes its physical imperfection heard in the
midst of ethereal harmony,--so deep was the sensibility that
found an organ in Hepzibah's voice!

"There is
nothing but
love here, Clifford," she added,--"nothing but love! You are
at home! "

The guest
responded to her tone by a smile,
which did not half light up his face. Feeble as it was, however,
and gone in a moment, it had a charm of wonderful beauty. It was
followed by a coarser expression; or one that had the effect of
coarseness on the fine mould and outline of his countenance,
because there was nothing intellectual to temper it. It was a
look of appetite. He ate food with what might almost be termed
voracity; and seemed to forget himself, Hepzibah, the young girl,
and everything else around him, in the sensual enjoyment which
the bountifully spread table afforded. In his natural system,
though high-wrought and delicately refined, a sensibility to the
delights of the palate was probably inherent. It would have been
kept in check, however, and even converted into an
accomplishment, and one of the thousand modes of intellectual
culture, had his more ethereal characteristics retained their
vigor. But, as it existed now, the effect was painful, and made
Phoebe droop her eyes.

In a
little while the guest became
sensible of the fragrance of the yet untasted coffee. He quaffed
it eagerly. The subtle essence acted on him like a charmed
draught, and caused the opaque substance of his animal being to
grow transparent, or, at least, translucent; so that a spiritual
gleam was transmitted through it, with a clearer lustre than
hitherto.

"More, more!"
he cried, with nervous haste in
his utterance, as if anxious to retain his grasp of what sought
to escape him. "This is what I need! Give me more!"

Under this
delicate and powerful influence, he sat more
erect, and looked out from his eyes with a glance that took note
of what it rested on. It was not
so much that his expression grew more intellectual; this, though
it had its share, was not the most peculiar effect. Neither was
what we call the moral nature so forcibly awakened as to present
itself in remarkable prominence. But a certain fine temper of
being was now,--not brought out in full relief, but changeably
and imperfectly betrayed,--of which it was the function to deal
with all beautiful and enjoyable things. In a character where it
should exist as the chief attribute, it would bestow on its
possessor an exquisite taste, and an enviable susceptibility of
happiness. Beauty would be his life; his aspirations would all
tend toward it; and, allowing his frame and physical organs to be
in consonance, his own developments would likewise be beautiful.
Such a man should have nothing to do with sorrow; nothing with
strife; nothing with the martyrdom which, in an infinite variety
of shapes, awaits those who have the heart, and will, and
conscience, to fight a battle with the world. To these heroic
tempers, such martyrdom is the richest meed in the world's gift.
To the individual before us, it could only be a grief, intense in
due proportion with the severity of the infliction. He had no
right to be a martyr; and, beholding him so fit to be happy, and
so feeble for all other purposes, a generous, strong, and noble
spirit would, methinks, have been ready to sacrifice what little
enjoyment it might have planned for itself,--it would have
flung down the hopes, so paltry in its regard,--if thereby the
wintry blasts of our rude sphere might come tempered to such a
man.

Not to
speak it harshly or scornfully, it seemed
Clifford's nature to be a Sybarite. It was perceptible, even
there, in the dark old parlor, in the inevitable polarity with
which his eyes were attracted towards the quivering play of
sunbeams through the shadowy foliage. It was seen in his
appreciating notice of the vase of flowers, the scent of which he
inhaled with a zest almost peculiar to a physical organization so
refined that spiritual ingredients are moulded in with it. It
was betrayed in the unconscious smile with which he regarded
Phoebe, whose fresh and maidenly figure was both sunshine and
flowers,--their essence, in a prettier and more agreeable mode
of manifestation. Not less evident was this love and necessity
for the Beautiful in the instinctive caution with which, even so
soon, his eyes turned away from his hostess, and wandered to any
quarter rather than come back. It was Hepzibah's
misfortune,--not Clifford's fault. How could she,--so yellow as she was, so
wrinkled, so sad of mien, with that odd uncouthness
of a turban on her head, and that most
perverse of scowls contorting her brow,--how could he love to
gaze at her? But, did he owe her no affection for so much as she
had silently given? He owed her nothing. A nature like
Clifford's can contract no debts of that kind. It is,--we say
it without censure, nor in diminution of the claim which it
indefeasibly possesses on beings of another mould,--it is
always selfish in its essence; and we must give it leave to be
so, and heap up our heroic and disinterested love upon it so much
the more, without a recompense. Poor Hepzibah knew this truth,
or, at least, acted on the instinct of it. So long estranged
from what was lovely, as Clifford had been, she
rejoiced,--rejoiced, though with a present sigh, and a secret purpose to
shed tears in her own chamber,--that he had brighter objects
now before his eyes than her aged and uncomely features. They
never possessed a charm; and if they had, the canker of her grief
for him would long since have destroyed it.

The guest
leaned back
in his chair. Mingled in his countenance with a
dreamy delight, there was a troubled look of effort and unrest.
He was seeking to make himself more fully sensible of the scene
around him; or, perhaps, dreading it to be a dream or a play of
imagination, was vexing the fair moment with a struggle for some
added brilliancy and more durable illusion.

"How
pleasant!--How delightful!"
he murmured, but not as if
addressing any one. "Will it last? How balmy the atmosphere,
through that open window! An open window! How beautiful that
play of sunshine! Those flowers, how very fragrant! That young
girl's face, how cheerful, how blooming!--a flower with the
dew on it, and sunbeams in the dew-drops! Ah! this must be all
a dream! A dream! A dream! But it has quite hidden the four
stone walls! "

Then his
face darkened, as if the shadow
of a cavern or a dungeon had come over it; there was no more
light in its expression than might have come through the iron
grates of a prison window,--still lessening, too, as if he
were sinking further into the depths. Phoebe (being of that
quickness and activity of temperament that she seldom long
refrained from taking a part, and generally a good one, in what
was going forward) now felt herself moved to address the
stranger.

"Here is
a new kind of rose, which I found this
morning, in the garden," said she, choosing a small crimson one
from among the flowers in the vase. "There will be but five or
six on the bush, this season. This is the most perfect of them
all; not a speck of blight or
mildew in it. And how sweet it is!--sweet like no other rose!
One can never forget that scent!"

"Ah!--let me
see!--let me
hold it!" cried the guest, eagerly seizing the flower,
which, by the spell peculiar to remembered odors, brought
innumerable associations along with the fragrance that it
exhaled. "Thank you! This has done me good. I remember how I
used to prize this flower--long ago, I suppose, very long
ago!--or was it only yesterday? It makes me feel young again! Am I
young? Either this remembrance is singularly distinct, or this
consciousness strangely dim! But how kind of the fair young
girl! Thank you! Thank you!"

The favorable
excitement
derived from this little crimson rose afforded Clifford the
brightest moment which he enjoyed at the breakfast-table. It
might have lasted longer, but that his eyes happened, soon
afterwards, to rest on the face of the old Puritan, who, out of
his dingy frame and lustreless canvas, was looking down on the
scene like a ghost, and a most ill-tempered and ungenial one.
The guest made an impatient gesture of the hand, and addressed
Hepzibah with what might easily be recognized as the licensed
irritability of a petted member of the family.

"Hepzibah!--Hepzibah," cried
he, with no little force and
distinctness,--"why do you keep that odious picture on the
wall? Yes, yes!--that is precisely your taste! I have told
you a thousand times, that it was the evil genius of the
house!--my evil genius particularly! Take it down, at
once!"

"Then, at
all events,"
continued he, still speaking with some energy, "pray
cover it with a crimson curtain, broad enough to hang in folds,
and with a golden border and tassels. I cannot bear it! It must
not stare me in the face!"

"Yes, dear
Clifford, the
picture shall be covered," said Hepzibah, soothingly. "There is
a crimson curtain in a trunk above stairs,--a little faded and
moth-eaten, I'm afraid,--but Phoebe and I will do wonders with
it."

"This very
day, remember!" said he; and then added,
in a low self-communing voice,--"Why should we live in this
dismal house at all? Why not go to the south of France?--to
Italy?--Paris, Naples, Venice, Rome? Hepzibah will say, we
have not the means. A droll idea that!"

He smiled
to
himself, and threw a glance of fine sarcastic meaning towards
Hepzibah.

But the
several
moods of feeling, faintly as they were marked, through which he
had passed, occurring in so brief an interval of time, had
evidently wearied the stranger. He was probably accustomed to a
sad monotony of life, not so much flowing in a stream, however
sluggish, as stagnating in a pool around his feet. A slumberous
veil diffused itself over his countenance, and had an effect,
morally speaking, on its naturally delicate and elegant outline,
like that which a brooding mist, with no sunshine in it, throws
over the features of a landscape. He appeared to become
grosser,--almost cloddish. If aught of interest or beauty--even
ruined beauty--had heretofore been visible in this man, the
beholder might now begin to doubt it, and to accuse his own
imagination of deluding him with whatever grace had flickered
over that visage, and whatever exquisite lustre had gleamed in
those filmy eyes.

Before he
had quite sunken away,
however, the sharp and peevish tinkle of the shop-bell made
itself audible. Striking most disagreeably on Clifford's
auditory organs and the characteristic sensibility of his nerves,
it caused him to start upright out of his chair.

"Good
Heavens, Hepzibah!
what horrible disturbance have we now in the
house?" cried he, wreaking his resentful impatience as a matter
of course, and a custom of old--on the one person in the world
that loved him. "I have never heard such a hateful clamor! Why
do you permit it? In the name of all dissonance, what can it
be?"

It was
very remarkable into what prominent
relief--even as if a dim picture should leap suddenly from its
canvas--Clifford's character was thrown, by this apparently trifling
annoyance. The secret was, that an individual of his temper can
always be pricked more acutely through his sense of the beautiful
and harmonious than through his heart. It is even
possible--for similar cases have often happened--that if Clifford, in his
foregoing life, had enjoyed the means of cultivating his taste to
its utmost perfectibility, that subtle attribute might, before
this period, have completely eaten out or filed away his
affections. Shall we venture to pronounce, therefore, that his
long and black calamity may not have had a redeeming drop of
mercy at the bottom?

"Dear Clifford,
I wish I could keep
the sound from your ears," said Hepzibah, patiently, but
reddening with a painful suffusion of shame. "It is very
disagreeable even to me. But, do you know, Clifford, I have
something to tell you? This ugly noise,--pray
run, Phoebe, and see who is there!--this naughty little
tinkle is nothing but our shop-bell!"

"Yes, our
shop-bell," said Hepzibah, a certain natural
dignity, mingled with deep emotion, now asserting itself in her
manner. "For you must know, dearest Clifford, that we are very
poor. And there was no other resource, but either to accept
assistance from a hand that I would push aside (and so would
you!) were it to offer bread when we were dying for it,--no
help, save from him--or else to earn our subsistence with my
own hands! Alone, I might have been content to starve. But you
were to be given back to me! Do you think, then, dear Clifford,"
added she, with a wretched smile, "that I have brought an
irretrievable disgrace on the old house, by opening a little shop
in the front gable? Our great-great-grandfather did the same,
when there was far less need! Are you ashamed of me?"

"Shame! Disgrace!
Do you speak these words to me,
Hepzibah?" said Clifford--not angrily, however; for when a
man's spirit has been thoroughly crushed, he may be peevish at
small offences, but never resentful of great ones. So he spoke
with only a grieved emotion. "It was not kind to say so,
Hepzibah! What shame can befall me, now?"

And then
the
unnerved man--he that had been born for enjoyment, but had met
a doom so very wretched--burst into a woman's passion of tears.
It was but of brief continuance, however; soon leaving him in a
quiescent, and, to judge by his countenance, not an uncomfortable
state. From this mood, too, he partially rallied, for an
instant, and looked at Hepzibah with a smile, the keen,
half-derisory purport of which was a puzzle to her.

Finally, his
chair
being deep and softly cushioned, Clifford fell asleep. Hearing
the more regular rise and fall of his breath--(which, however,
even then, instead of being strong and full, had a feeble kind of
tremor, corresponding with the lack of vigor in his
character)--hearing these tokens of settled slumber, Hepzibah seized the
opportunity to peruse his face more attentively than she had yet
dared to do. Her heart melted away in tears; her profoundest
spirit sent forth a moaning voice, low, gentle, but inexpressibly
sad. In this depth of grief and pity, she felt that there was no
irreverence in gazing at his altered, aged, faded, ruined face.
But no sooner was she a little relieved than her
conscience smote her for gazing
curiously at him, now that he was so changed; and, turning
hastily away, Hepzibah let down the curtain over the sunny
window, and left Clifford to slumber there.